Mercedes boss Toto Wolff believes the battle for overall honours in Formula 1 is "more exciting than ever" and that over half of this year’s races have not been won by the quickest car at that specific venue.
Mercedes and Ferrari have exchanged the lead of the Constructors’ Championship on multiple occasions this year, with the reigning champions taking five wins to the seven accrued by its rivals Ferrari and Red Bull with four and three wins respectively.
Mercedes holds a slender 10-point advantage over Ferrari, while third-placed Red Bull, although a distant 122 points behind Mercedes, has also been a front-runner but has suffered from a high number of reliability issues.
“The battle at the top is more exciting than ever before, and things are also very tight in the midfield,” said Wolff.
“The races have not only produced some great wheel-to-wheel action on the track but also some surprise winners: seven of the 12 races so far were not necessarily won by the fastest car.
“All in all, I would say that the 2018 season has been a marvellous advertisement for the sport.
“For us as a team, the half-term report is a positive one, as we are currently leading both world championships.
“We owe this to the efforts of our team in Brackley and Brixworth and to the driving skills of Lewis [Hamilton] and Valtteri [Bottas].
“At the same time, though, we also realise that we have dropped points in more than one race, so we are going flat out to boost performance even more for the second half of the season.
“We will come back refreshed with the necessary energy to raise our game even further in the second half of the season.”
Hamilton holds a 24-point title advantage over Sebastian Vettel having capped the first half of the campaign with back-to-back wins in Germany and Hungary.
